Lance Wallnau

Twentieth century, let’s see, we left the secularists in charge…We had Hitler, we had Joseph Stalin and we had Mao. 120 million people [killed]. It gets worse. In the second half of the 20thcentury, we’ve murdered 400 [million] babies through abortion in China and 50 million in the United States. Let’s see, there are 500 million people we have killed in the 20th century. It’s one-tenth of the number of people who are living today, almost one-tenth.

How did we do that? We let the secularists in charge. You can’t let the secularists in charge! You have to get involved.

Last week, a few hundred pastors, parishioners and activists gathered at Jim Garlow’s Skyline Wesleyan Church outside of San Diego for what Garlow called the “Future Conference.” The name of the conference appeared to have two meanings. First, in the words of its marketing materials, that “what you thought was coming…is here now” — in other words, that a great spiritual clash in which Christians are called to be martyrs has arrived. And second, that ultimately, the future will belong to conservative Christians as they wrest control from secular authority and take “dominion” over the country and the world.

The themes of imminent martyrdom and eventual dominion dominated the four-day conference, in which 56 speakers gave what added up to more than 24 hours of TED-style speeches.

The event was heavily tinged with “seven mountains” dominionism, the idea that Christians are called by God to be leaders of or to wield dominant influence over the seven main areas, or “mountains,” of culture — not only religion and family, but also government, business, education, media and entertainment.

Garlow himself has been very active in politics, as one of the organizing forces behind the effort to pass the Proposition 8 gay-marriage ban in California and a proponent of Pulpit Freedom Sunday, the movement that encourages pastors to break the rarely-enforced IRS rule that prohibits tax-exempt churches from endorsing or opposing candidates for office. Garlow has especially close ties with former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich, to whom he gave partial credit for inspiring the conference. Gingrich submitted a video address to the conference, as did two current Republican members of Congress, Rep. Jody Hice of Georgia and Sen. James Lankford of Oklahoma.

Speaker after speaker lamented the failure of the church to engage in the “culture” — through media, through education, and most importantly through politics. As Garlow wrote in an introductory letter to attendees:

Allow me to be direct: our nation is in trouble. Deep trouble. But you already knew that. That is one of the reasons you are at the FUTURE Conference. But why is our nation in trouble? Because of (how do I say this nicely?) the church. What is lacking? A clear proclamation of biblical answers to the messiness of our culture. Does the Bible actually speak to civic and national issues. Yes, it does!

Secular government and culture, the message was, are creating chaos at home and around the world. And pastors and believers who fail to engage in the wider world are letting it happen.

Just as important was the idea that, as Garlow put it, “you and I were made for this moment.” The going has gotten tough, the message was, not just for Christians facing violent persecution in places like Syria and Iraq, but also for conservative American Christians who claim to feel marginalized by advances in gay rights and who fear a potential Supreme Court decision striking down gay marriage bans. Glenn Beck, promoting the conference with Garlow, said that he knew of 10,000 pastors who were willing to die fighting this supposed anti-Christian persecution in America.

Most speakers were careful to point out that these threats are on very different orders of magnitude, although some hinted that American Christians were on the path to much more difficult times.

This was a spiritual battle that a disengaged church was letting the forces of darkness — radical Islam, the “redefinition of marriage,” abortion rights, pornography — win. Territory would have to be regained.

A ‘Spiritual Battle’ Against Gay Marriage

As is patently obvious, this is a spiritual battle. We need the intercession of every prayer warrior, every angel, and certainly the Holy Spirit. We must bombard the gates of Heaven ceaselessly for God Almighty to reverse our tragic cultural course and restore marriage to the venerable and beautiful institution that He did create.

-Frank Schubert, National Organization for Marriage political director, speaking at the Future Conference

While Garlow gathered speakers to talk about a host of imminent threats to American Christians including terrorism, abortion rights, an economic collapse, pornography, welfare and unbiblical movies, at the top of nearly everybody’s minds was the upcoming Supreme Court decision on marriage equality.

Garlow took hope in a presentation from Troy Newman, head of the anti-choice group Operation Rescue, who boasted of a decline in abortion providers in recent years. “If America can survive long enough,” Garlow said, maybe, like in the anti-abortion struggle, a new generation will rise up and see “the casualties from same-sex marriage are so horrific, this has got to be stopped in our nation.”

He elaborated on the “horrific” consequences of marriage equality in an address to the audience the next day, referring to the thoroughly debunked study by sociologist Mark Regnerus that purported to show all manner of negative outcomes for children raised by same-sex couples.

“I’ve been concerned with how many Christians, how many pastors, cannot make the theological case or the sociological case for marriage,” he said. “The redefinition of marriage, sociologically, will be profoundly destructive, profoundly harming. The Regnerus report out of the University of Texas is going to be only one of many examples of many that will follow that are going to show the catastrophic consequences, the pain, the suffering inflicted on the human race by this redefinition of marriage.”

Schubert, a political strategist who works with the National Organization for Marriage (NOM), similarly cited Regnerus’ questionable conclusions as he urged audience members to give money to NOM and to prod their pastors to speak out against marriage equality because “being silent on the most important issue of our day turns it over to the forces of darkness.” If your pastor refuses to speak out against gay marriage, he advised, “I would look for a different church.”

Schubert said that while anti-gay advocates “could very well win” the marriage case before the Supreme Court, Christians must be prepared to use “any and all efforts to encourage resistance” to a ruling they disagree with, “short of violence.” Christians, he said, should “renounce as illegitimate” any Supreme Court decision that attempts to “redefine” marriage.

NOM’s president, Brian Brown, delivered a similar message, telling attendees that the success of the LGBT equality movement means “the days of comfortable Christianity are over.”

“Things have been good for a long time for us,” he said. “We don’t experience the sort of persecution we’re witnessing in the Middle East. We don’t fear for our lives in coming together and worshipping. We’ve felt for a long time that we’re a part of dominant culture. Now in the course of the last decade or so, maybe a little longer, we’ve realized that’s not the case. Things are starting to change. And that, to put it bluntly, the days of comfortable Christianity are over.”

A Supreme Court ruling in favor of marriage equality, he said, would “put a lie into law” and “that law will be used to marginalize, repress and punish those of us who stand for the truth of marriage.”

Claiming that Obama administration policies opposing the violent repression of gay people overseas are actually persecuting people who oppose marriage equality, Brown said that what’s happening to Americans is nothing in comparison and so U.S. Christians should be “cheerful” about “being persecuted.” “What we see and we go and work with folks from around the world is a whole other level of hatred,” he said. “Be cheerful, be happy, you’re being persecuted! Quit being so weak! Okay? What I’m trying to say is, if that’s happening we must be doing something right!”

Anti-gay activist Michael Brown had a similar message, saying that previously bullied LGBT people have now become the “bullies” and that the LGBT rights movement “will not be satisfied until the church bows down.”

Garlow told the crowd that they were “moving into a time of testing” where evangelicals would have to stand up to the predominant culture. He recalled a “vision” he had all the way back in 1990 in which he spoke with God about a future in which there would be “churches being closed by government” on the basis of “the civil rights of homosexuals.”

But no speaker took the gay-marriage panic as far as Liberty Counsel’s Mat Staver, who spoke to the conference via video. Marriage equality, Staver warned, will cause “a cataclysmic social upheaval in every conceivable area.”

Touting a pledge to disobey any marriage equality ruling that he has recruited hundreds of prominent anti-gay activists to sign, Staver said that gay-marriage opponents must be prepared to resist such a ruling just like the leaders of the Civil Rights Movement resisted segregation and Jim Crow: “I think we’re back in the days of Martin Luther King, Jr. If they tell you to get off the bus, you don’t get off the bus. If they tell you to go to the back of the bus, you don’t go to the back of the bus.”

“This could be the best, most magnificent time for the church,” he said. “It is moments like this, where there is an unprecedented clash, where there’s impossible odds, that God will intervene for his people.”

Staver closed his speech with a rewritten version of anti-Nazi dissident Martin Niemöller’s famous “First they came for the socialists” lines, appropriating them to warn that the supposed persecution of bakers, florists and wedding photographers who deny service to gay people will open the door to a much wider persecution of Christians in America.

Beware Muslims! (Unless They Agree With You On Gay Rights)

Christians are being enslaved and beheaded and burned alive across the Middle East and he’s silent. Christians are being threatened and intimidated and sued and sequestered in Middle America and mum’s the word.

-Dr. Everett Piper, president of Oklahoma Wesleyan University, speaking of President Obama at the Future Conference

Although most speakers were careful to say that the supposed persecution of American Christian conservatives at the hands of the LGBT rights movement is on an entirely different order of magnitude than that being faced by Christians at the hands of ISIS and oppressive Islamist governments, there was a sense of joint martyrdom, that both are fighting for spiritual ground against forces allied with Satan.

As Steven Khoury, an Arab Israeli pastor, put it, “persecution is coming to America,” and he was there to help Americans learn how to stand up to it.

Garlow invited a few of the top anti-Islam activists in America to warn that the country, if it lets its guard down, risks facing subjugation at the hands of American Muslims. Frank Gaffney of the Center for Security Policy warned that since 9/11, millions of Muslim immigrants have staged a “colonization” of America. He warned pastors in the crowd against any sort of interfaith dialogue with Muslims or letting Muslim groups use their church facilities, which he said “is really about providing political cover to Muslims who don’t deserve it.” Anti-Muslim activist Stephen Coughlin similarly warned pastors against falling for the “interfaith delusion.”

But nobody had a more dire warning than right-wing activist Avi Lipkin, who told pastors that “all” churches in America have been infiltrated by Muslim spies pretending to be Christian converts. These moles, he warned, are cataloguing Christians and Jews in order to kill them all when Muslim jihadists take over.

All of the talk of "religious liberty" and threats to the First Amendment seemed to be conveniently forgotten when Lipkin endorsed laws such as Switzerland’s ban on minarets, declaring: “Until Islam is banned and suppressed and erased, the Jews will not have any chance to survive in this country.”

However, he had some good news: Muslim immigration to America, he predicted, would drive U.S. Jews to the Middle East, setting up a conflict in which Islam will be “finished.” “I predict Islam will be terminated very soon,” he said to enthusiastic applause.

It was jarring, then, to later in the very same day, hear a speech from Austin Ruse, the head of the conservative Catholic United Nations advocacy group C-FAM, in which he said that some of his greatest allies in the fight to stop “radically secular countries” from inserting LGBT rights and reproductive health language into UN documents were representatives of Muslim countries.

“The pro-life, pro-family coalition in the United Nations is strange bedfellows,” he said. “It includes Muslims. And without a bloc of Muslim countries supporting life and family at the UN, we would have had a right to abortion a long time ago, and redefinition of family.”

Garlow took it upon himself to clarify this, taking the stage after Ruse's remarks to reassure the audience that “co-belligerency” with “people who are hostile to much of our values” is sometimes necessary when “they actually have an interest in some portion of our Kingdom values.” He compared Ruse’s work with Muslim countries at the UN to his alliance with Mormon leaders to pass Proposition 8 in California.

Throughout the conference, Israel was portrayed as a spiritual bulwark of the West against surrounding Satanic Islam — something exemplified by its relatively secular values. No one, however, mentioned, that Israel is one of what Ruse called the “radical secular countries” advocating for LGBT rights at the UN. Also ignored were policies such as Israel's public funding of abortion services or the fact that just days prior to the event, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sent his "blessings" to LGBT Pride marchers.

Dr. Everett Piper, the president of Oklahoma Wesleyan University, tied together this idea that “secularists” are working in cahoots with radical Islam, aided by President Obama.

“For 67 years, we’ve disparaged dead, white, European males in our college classrooms,” he said. “Are we surprised that we now have a president whose first action was to remove the bust of Winston Churchill from the White House and send it back to the British ambassador’s home? For 67 years, we’ve sent our kids off to sit under faculty who have panned a Judeo-Christian ethic and praised its antithesis. Are we surprised that we now have a White House that is seemingly more aligned with the Muslim Brotherhood and the PLO than it is Benjamin Netanyahu and Franklin Graham?”

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich — whom Garlow partially credited with inspiring the conference — put it a different way in a video address to the event, saying that Christians are facing simultaneous attacks from “secular totalitarianism” and “Islamic supremacism,” with the two factions allied in a “war on Christianity.” Gingrich, who has spent years warning that the U.S. will soon become a "secular atheist country" that is "dominated by radical Islamists,” has been working to court pastors like Garlow who have ties to the dominionist movement.

Taking Dominion

Christians are dual citizens. We are citizens of the Kingdom of God by faith in Jesus Christ … We are also citizens of an earthly “kingdom” … In the absence of Christians taking their dual citizenship seriously, obeying the dual commissions faithfully, and attempting to follow the dual commandments devotedly, the devil’s crowd has taken over key places of influence in our culture largely by default, even in a nation where professing Christians are still in the majority.

- Family Research Council manual for establishing a church “culture impact team,” distributed to pastors at the Future Conference

The sense of the inadequacy of secular leadership that pervaded the Future Conference was summarized by Republican Rep. Jody Hice of Georgia, who told the Future Conference via video that secular government leads to rampant divorce, teen pregnancy, crime and gang violence, all of which invite a greater presence from Big Government:

Garlow painted a similarly bleak message, saying that the struggles of the city of Detroit are the result of a lack of “bold, biblical preaching and the application of scriptural truth to all components of contemporary life.”

“The absence of biblical truth being applied to a metropolitan area literally destroyed it,” he said.

Garlow didn’t specify which exact “biblical truths” Detroit is in violation of, but conservative activist Star Parker, who declared her intention to “destroy the welfare state,” might have provided some hints.

Parker told the gathering that the U.S. is “in a similar place right now in our country to where we were in the 1850s” when we were “half free and half slave.”

“And we’re at a crossroads again,” she said, “because we’re at the place where we’re half free and half slave. We’re in the battle of our lifetime, we’re in the battle for the very heart and soul of our great country, to go into a future, if we can, even as the Scriptures told us that God actually planned for us a future and a hope, and yet that future and hope is under attack.”

“We’re either going to come up out of this biblical and free,” she said, “or we gotta come up here secular and statist.”

Chuck Stetson, who runs a program that develops “biblical literacy” courses that clear the First-Amendment bar for being taught in public schools, had a similar message, claiming that the great genocides of the 20th century (in which he included abortion) were the result of leaving the “secularists in charge.”

Lamenting that “three percent of the population” (LGBT people) are defeating "70 percent of the population” (Christians), Stetson urged conservative Christians to develop a “broader concept of missions” and to get involved in politics as well as “literature, art [and] music.”

He used the metaphor of a cruise ship: Christians, he said, were gathering around the lifeboats in an effort to save souls, even while throughout the boat, “they’re breaking out the booze, bringing out the gaming tables. They need the Christians down there.”

In fact, the Future Conference, Garlow reported, started out as a sort of founding conference for the United States Coalition of Apostolic Leaders, a new group led by Joe Mattera, a New York minister who is a leader in the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR). NAR is a controversial movement within evangelical Christianity which is led by self-declared prophets and apostles. Many of NAR’s leaders promote “seven mountains” dominionism, the idea that conservative Christians must take “dominion” over all seven “mountains” of culture in order to pave the way for Christ’s return.

(NAR and dominionism began to attract press attention back in 2011 when then-Texas Gov. Rick Perry hosted a rally featuring many NAR leaders. Its adherents then began to downplay its core themes, saying they were seeking more “influence” than “dominion.”)

Wallnau gave a Glenn Beck-style whiteboard presentation outlining the "seven mountains" theology for the audience, explaining that if the church doesn’t occupy each of the seven spheres of culture, “the Enemy will.”

“The reason why we’re having a problem in the United States is because, honestly, we have not been pursuing the discipling of the nation, we’ve been pursuing the evangelizing of the people and the building of ministries,” he said. “And so we’ve neglected entire territory that the Enemy was all too quick to go in and take possession of.”

Peacocke ­­­— the founder of a group that works with business and community leaders to bring “God’s kingdom to earth” — put the message succinctly when the told the enthusiastic crowd that Christians have been called to be leaders in every area: “We should be leading. Virtually every place there’s a Christian, they should be a manager, they should be management. We should have the relational skillset to manage wherever we go, because that is what Christians are called to be, responsible empowerers of other people.”

In his talk, Mattera clarified that he and his allies were calling on Christians to become “leaders of culture” not through force but through simply being the best in all fields. “We’re not called to take cities, we’re called to love them and serve them,” he said, “and once we produce the greatest problem-solvers the world has ever seen, the leaders of culture will come and beg us to lead, because they’re going to see that we’re the only ones who have the answer.”

He added that a key component of this would be to follow the scriptural commandment to “multiply” and “replenish” the Earth, which he specified means having more than two children per couple.

“In general, God has called His children to have more children than any other people,” he said, “so this way we will have the people to fill every aspect of culture, not just bodies, but trained in the covenant, because the word ‘replenish’ implies that they go and they fill the earth with God’s law, with the result being subdue the earth and have dominion.”

A practical guide to the political portion of this mission was provided by Kenyn Cureton, the head of ministerial outreach at the Family Research Council, who presented pastors and churchgoers with guides for establishing “culture impact teams” — basically political committees — within churches. Politically involved churches, he said, are “fighting a spiritual battle,” not against gay rights advocates or pro-choice groups, but against Satan, who has caught cultural liberals in his “snare.”

“Who’s behind the effort to snuff out human life through embryo-destructive research and abortion?” he asked. “Who’s behind the effort to indoctrinate our children with these alternative lifestyles, redefine marriage, and even ruin our military? Who’s behind the effort to drive God out government, Christ out of culture and faith out of public life? Who’s behind that? I mean, it’s pretty easy for us to understand as believers, it’s the Devil.”

Where Politics and Religion Collide

Although the focus of Garlow’s conference was largely on the twin evils of secularism and Islam, he also invited Black and Latino pastors with whom he had worked on resisting Prop 8 to discuss criminal justice reform, on which conservatives are increasingly engaging in bipartisan coalition work, and immigration, on which some evangelical leaders have been trying to get Republicans to adopt positions, or at least rhetoric, that is less offensive to Latino voters.

One of the most revealing moments of the conference came after a speech by Mark Gonzales, a Texas pastor who through his Hispanic Prayer Network seems to be attempting to connect the NAR movement with Latino evangelicals. Gonzales told the mostly white audience that God is using Latino immigration to bring “revival to America,” but that Satan is trying to stop that revival from happening by dividing the church on the issue of immigration.

And it’s not just religious revival that Latino immigrants will bring, he said. They will also help conservatives win elections.

“When God allows this many people to come into a nation, he’s up to something,” Gonzales said. He then made a well-rehearsed pitch to the conservative audience for immigration reform that includes a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants who have long lived in the country if they first overcome a number of hurdles.

Immediately following Gonzales’s speech, Garlow came on stage to “clarify” for the crowd what Gonzales was saying. “What he’s talking about, so we’re all on the same page, is not amnesty,” he said.

Gonzales responded that anti-immigrant pundits do indeed call proposals like his “amnesty,” but using that word is the “biggest disservice we can do as the body of Christ.”

Parts of the audience clapped. Others did not seem sold.

Questions of biblical guidance and political expediency had, for a moment, become the same thing.

Evangelist Lance Wallnau announced on the Trinity Broadcasting Network’s Praise the Lord that God is giving Christians "technology that can heal diabetes" within months, along with technology “that is going to revolutionize our dependence on oil and energy.” However, Wallnau shared that these new discoveries will only be “given to Kingdom-minded believers” and not sold to benefit the general public.

Later in the interview, Wallnau likened the development to the Apostle Paul, who in Acts of the Apostles obtained refuge from the leader of Malta after healing his ailing father. Wallnau claimed that he is urging that the purported diabetes cure be shared with “top layers of the political elite” of the Chinese Communist Party in order to gain access to their government and help to spread the Gospel.

Well, the church is the equipping place, but the world system is where we haven’t gone. We’ve been going into all the nations to plant churches. We haven’t been going into all the nations to invade systems. We have to start to bring the Word of God, the teaching of Christ, into the systems. What systems? The governments need to be led by people with principle. That’s how you overthrow principalities, is people who have anointing and principles occupying high places. The media, right now the economics world, the media world and the government world is shaping every minute that you’re bumping into when you have a conversation….and education. What we need are believers going to the top of these systems because it’s where the high places are that Satan occupies the strong man’s house. And if you want to plunder the strong man’s house, you’ve got to go where the gates of Hell are located.

On Wednesday’s edition of Prophetic Perspectives with Rick Joyner, Lance Wallnau, a major proponent of Seven Mountains Dominionism, explained that the Occupy Wall Street movement emerged as a result of the fact that the Devil, and not right-wing Christians, was in charge of Wall Street banks, which he says led to the economic crisis. Wallnau said that along with the economics mountain, “the Devil will send kings” to different cultural mountains, such as government media, arts and education, to “screw it up.” He warned that government leaders are “under the Kingdom of Darkness” and that it is the responsibility of people with a “biblical worldview” to “dominate” each of the Seven Mountains.

Wallnau: The Church is the local body of Christ, but what we’ve misunderstood is, the world system has to have teaching, because the only way you’re going to see nations made disciples is if we unpack what we’ve got in these systems. What are these systems? These are the systems that are in chaos right now because they haven’t been taught. Right now you’ve got, depending when you watch this broadcast, you got the Occupy Wall Street movement. You know why? Because we didn’t Occupy Wall Street with kingdom principles regarding fiscal responsibility and discipline. Now we got people who are frustrated, like Woodstock generation type, Next Generation people in the streets, who are upset because somebody didn’t deal with economics. So if you don’t deal with economics, guess what? The Devil will send kings into that area who will screw it up. If you don’t deal with the arts and the music and the literature and the songs and the culture that your children are being baptized into, guess what? The Devil will send the influencers into the art world and they will pervert your kids thinking. If you don’t start to control truth in media and conscience in media so there is accountability, the Devil will send kings who will dominate the information process. If you don’t start to get a hold of government responsibility and laws properly framed that have a biblical worldview…these people that are there, unfortunately, not only are they under the Kingdom of Darkness, when they meet us they don’t always meet the best of us, we should be like Josephs who are solving problems, we shouldn’t be like angry prophets who are upset with the way the world is getting screwed up. Education mountain, I tell you, either we go there or the Devil sends people there.

Ever since the New Apostolic Reformation had its political coming out party at Rick Perry's recent "The Response" prayer rally, there has been a lot of investigation and discussion of the movement and the brand of Dominion Theology that is promotes ... so much so, in fact, that NAR-affiliated leaders have suddenly begun trying to downplay all their talk of taking dominion.

On his website, Hillman posts pieces written by Johnny Enlow, author of "The Seven Mountain Prophecy" which asserts that goal of Christians ought to be to establish a "virtual theocracy" in which government leaders will also be religious leaders so that they can present "the nations of the world to the Lord as His possession" and bring about the return of Christ.

On Hillman's Seven Mountains website, Enlow says that the best way for Christians to accomplish this goal is through stealth:

The goal is not just to have Christians in high places, but rather to have Christians who are called to be in high places step into that role. And wearing a "Christian” label on our sleeve isn’t the point. We need to learn to be "as wise as serpents and harmless as doves” and realize that stealth authority and influence are much preferred over overt authority and influence. A low profile diffuses resistance from the opposition.

Last week, we discovered a video featuring Hillman, Enlow, and Wallnau discussing the attention that Seven Mountains and Dominionism have been receiving during which Wallnau suggested that using language about "taking over" is fine to use when "preaching to the choir" but such language shouldn't be used in situations where the media or secular audiences are present:

Wallnau: Part of my problem is that people will take my message, link their own interpretation to it and go out and talk about taking down high places, coming against the Devil - I am very particular where I use that language because you don't want to startle the horses out of the barn. If you're talking to a secular audience, you don't talk about having dominion over them, I mean, my gosh, that's what their afraid of, that's what the Left is saying the Right wants to do and the Right is saying the Left wants to do.

So the anxiety is based on misinformation. What I've said today is I want to find out who's anointed with the right ideas and I want to serve them - to be a Joseph, you're going to shape Pharaoh.

This whole idea of taking over, and that language of take over, it doesn't actually help - it's good for preaching to the choir, and it's shorthand if we interpret it right, but it's very bad for media.

Earlier today Brian noted how even conservative Christian activists, like talk-show host Janet Mefferd, are marveling at the "strange turn of events" that had brought the self-proclaimed apostles and prophets of the New Apostolic Reformation together with the traditional Religious Right activists and put on display for the world to see at Gov. Rick Perry's "The Response" prayer rally.

But it is not just "mainstream" Religious Right activists who are alarmed at this development, as now even the full-blown Christian Reconstructionists at American Vision are warning about NAR's increasing influence.

Yesterday Joel McDurmon, the Director of Research for American Vision, posted a piece on the organization's website warning about the rise of the NAR and their Seven Mountains theology and saying that while Christian Reconstructionists like them "would properly recriminalize sodomy, adultery, and abortion," they seek to implement such policies through evangelism, not by seizing control.

By contrast, Seven Mountain advocates, asserts McDurmon, seek to seize control in order to institute a theocracy:

The First and most concerning point is that the 7MD version does what critics of traditional dominion theology have falsely accused us of doing the whole time: planning to grab the reins of influence through whatever means necessary, usurp the seats of political power, and impose some tyrannical “theocracy” upon society from the top down with a “whether you like it or not, it’s for your own good” mentality.

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There is no doubt, however, that the 7MDs do have a goal of top-down control of society. This is explicit in their literature in many places. The exception to this is when they are in PR mode: then they downplay and even completely deny that they believe in dominion.

Perhaps more should be written on these guys and the threats they pose to society. They may have a few better political ideas, but they are just as dangerous in degree as the most radical of the left.

McDurmon quotes Peter Wagner, Lance Wallnau, Rick Joyner, Johnny Enlow and others who advocate Seven Mountains theology to warn that they "desire to grab the seats of power and install a temporary totalitarianism for your own good which they think will usher in the messiah."

So when someone who openly admits that their goal is to "recriminalize sodomy, adultery, and abortion" starts warning about the "tyrannical" nature of NAR and their Seven Mountains theology, it seems like proof that Dominionism is not just some left-wing conspiracy theory.

New Apostolic Reformation guru C. Peter Wagner has been especially active in trying to downplay the Dominionist aspect of his movement and just yesterday spent twenty minutes telling Voice of America that they were merely seeking to "influence" society and have no interest in establishing any sort of theocratic society.

The problem for Wagner is that there are all sorts of writings and videos of him openly advocating such things produced back before he became so cautious about his choice of language.

For instance, there is this letter he wrote in 2007 in which he cited Lance Wallnau's teachings on the Seven Mountains as the foundation for his work and declared that Christians were mandated by God to "do whatever is necessary" to institute their Dominion Theology:

Lance's trademark teaching relates to what he calls the seven "mind molders" or the "seven mountains." These have now become a permanent fixture in my personal teaching on taking dominion, and I have referenced Wallnau in The Church in the Workplace as well as in my forthcoming book Dominion! In my view it is not possible to get an operational handle on how to initiate corporate action toward social transformation without taking into account the seven mountains or what I like to call "molders of culture." The seven are religion, family, business, arts & entertainment, government, education, and media.

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Our theological bedrock is what has been known as Dominion Theology. This means that our divine mandate is to do whatever is necessary, by the power of the Holy Spirit, to retake the dominion of God's creation which Adam forfeited to Satan in the Garden of Eden. It is nothing less than seeing God's kingdom coming and His will being done here on earth as it is in heaven. This includes the need to govern apolitically, as well as to embrace spiritual warfare techniques that neutralize the control of our adversary within the functional and territorial spheres of authority to which we have been assigned. To do this, we know that we must be in communion, we must receive revelation, and we must apostolically and prophetically proclaim that revelation.

We have been writing about the growing overlap between the traditional Religious Right and the new brand of self-proclaimed prophets and apostles like Cindy Jacobs, Rick Joyner, Chuck Pierce, and Lou Engle, who have emerged out of the New Apostolic Reformation movement.

In recent years, old-school Religious Right leaders like Tony Perkins and Janet Porter have eagerly embraced leaders like Joyner, Engle and Jacobs and welcomed them into movement, often placing them front and center in their events.

So imagine our surprise when we took at look at the American Family Association's blog today and saw a post by Marsha West laying out her concerns about the movement and calling out various Religious Right leaders by name for aligning with false prophets like Jacobs:

Last year self-professed NAR prophet Cindy Jacobs’ and General’s International held the May Day 2010: A Cry To God For A Nation In Distress at the foot of the Lincoln Memorial where “local representatives shared about their state’s Christian heritage and lifted up prayers for their state and the United States. National leaders offered up prayers of repentance for seven main issues: family, the church, education, arts and entertainment, business, government and the media.” Janet Porter of Faith2Action had an active role in organizing the gathering. In attendance were such notables as James Dobson, Tony Perkins, Wendy Wright, Jerry Newcombe, Peter LaBarbera, David Barton, Mathew Staver, Robert Knight, Alan Keyes, to name a few. Also in attendance were several NAR leaders including C. Peter Wagner, Chuck Pierce, Dutch Sheets, Lance Wallnau and Rick Joyner.

In April 2010 conservative Liberty University in Lynchburg, VA hosted The Awakening 2010 conference sponsored by the Freedom Federation. They define themselves as “a group of the nation's largest multiracial, multiethnic and multigenerational faith-based and policy organizations representing more than 30 million Americans united by core values. The group’s mission is to bring together community leaders committed to mobilizing the Judeo-Christian worldview to preserve freedom and promote justice.”

What is wrong with this picture? People from the NAR who are in the grip of evil were invited to participate in both of these events. One example is Cindy Jacobs. Jacobs is the NAR’s “lead U.S. National Apostle.” Cindy is supposedly a modern day prophet. But I beg to differ. This woman has uttered more false prophecies than Walgreen’s has pills, proving beyond a reasonable doubt that she is no more a prophet of God than Lady Gaga! The truth is, Cindy Jacobs is a false prophet.

Considering that Perkins regularly co-hosts a radio broadcast with AFA head Tim Wildmon and Dobson, Barton, Staver and the like are key ideological allies of the organization, I wonder how they feel about being called out for associating with people "who are in the grip of evil."

Since I wrote a post a few weeks back about David Barton's open embrace of Seven Mountains Dominionism, I have gone back and re-read several of the books I have on the topic and have been watching lots of videos about it.

Today, I came across a video of Lance Wallnau - the leading Seven Mountains theologian operating today - talking about it and he makes two points that I think deserve to be highlighted: 1) that Seven Mountains Dominionism is founded upon the belief that every sphere of influence is literally being held captive by people hand-picked by Satan and 2) it is the obligation of Christians to "seize those high places" in order to bring about the return of Jesus Christ:

Elijah will come first and raise up that which will destroy the spirit of Baal and the spirit of Jezebel here on Earth. We are going to take on the false prophet and the beast, and we're going to annihilate both of them. When they are crushed, we will come to the Lord and say "The kingdoms of this world have become the kingdoms of our God" (Rev. 11:15). We will present the nations of the world to the Lord as His possession. They will be the dowry that the Father is providing for us to present to the Bridegroom. Lovesick for His bride, Jesus will no longer be able to restrain Himself and will burst through the clouds to come sweep us off our feet.

...

A government can potentially function as a virtual theocracy, but only as the individuals in power allow themselves to be puppets (i.e. servant) of the theocracy (God's rule and reign.) The goal is to bring the influence of heaven to bear on whatever political machinery that exists ...One of the primary roles of future government leaders will be to instruct in righteousness. The more God's judgments are poured out on earth, the more explicitly they will be able to give that instruction ... A new model of national leadership will develop as God exalts His mountain above all other mountains. There will be Joseph-type presidents of nations who will carry great spiritual authority and great civil authority. At various times, these presidents will need to step back and forth between those roles and address the concerns of each. There will be times to address the nation and say "I will now speak to you outside of my civil authority but in my capacity as a minister and servant of God." One can then address the moral and righteousness issues of the nation and speak out of the spiritual authority God has given him or her.

As we have explained before, Seven Mountains dominionism seeks to place Christians in control over the seven forces that shape and control our culture: (1) Business; (2) Government; (3) Media; (4) Arts and Entertainment; (5) Education; (6) Family; and (7) Religion. The reason for this, as Lance Wallnau, the leading advocate for Seven Mountains theology, explained is that Jesus "doesn't come back until He's accomplished the dominion of nations." And the way "dominion of nations" is accomplished is by having Christians gain control of these "seven mountains" in order to install a "virtual theocracy" overseen by "true apostles" who will fight Satan and his Antichrist agenda.

But Barton has tended to keep his ties to this movement under wraps and we had never heard him explicitly advocate Seven Mountains Dominionism ... until today on his radio program:

Barton: There's five areas that you have to be able to influence and control if you are going to take a culture and that's media, business, government, education, and pulpit.

Now, for twenty years as it turns out - I wasn't even aware of this - way back, Bill Bright from Campus Crusade, when he was still alive, Loren Cunningham, Youth With a Mission, these guys got together back at the same time and really felt like there were seven areas that had to be taken for a culture and these are the seven that they gave: family, religion, education, media, entertainment, business and government. Now we've grouped some of those together and throw some together, but they said those are the seven areas you have to have and if you can have those seven areas, you can shape and control whatever takes place in nations, continents, and even the world.

Green: So it's the same idea, saying "look, every single area of the culture you need to be involved in."

Barton: That's right. Christians got to get involved. And there's a Scripture they used that came out of Isiah 2:2 and it says "Now it shall come to pass in the latter days that the mountain of the Lord's house shall be established on the top of the mountains," so this is now called the Seven Mountain Prophecy, there's a book out by that name.

It says the Lord's house is going to be established on top of the mountains and these are the seven mountains. If you're going to establish God's kingdom, you've got to have these seven mountains and again that's family, religion, education, media, entertainment, business and government.

Now that's what we believed all along is you got to get involved in this stuff. Jesus said "you occupy 'til I come." We don't care when he comes, that's up to him. What we're supposed to do is take the culture in the meantime and you got to get involved in these seven areas.

It was just the other day that Mike Huckabee was saying that all Americans should be forced to listen to Barton's messages - at gunpoint if necessary.

Is Barton's call to have right-wing Christians take complete control over every aspect of society the message that Huckabee had in mind?

We have been writing a lot about the rise of the Dominionists like Lou Engle and Cindy Jacobs within the traditional Religious Right movement and paying close attention to the influence of Seven Mountains theology, which is the idea that Christians are called upon to gain control of the seven key aspects of culture (government, media, business, education, etc...) in order to unleash God's kingdom on Earth and bring about the return of Jesus Christ.

One of the key proponents of this Seven Mountains theology is Lance Wallnau who, thank to Jim Garlow, has become more involved in the political aspects of the Religious Right movement through Garlow's Pray and ACT effort.

Earlier this month Cindy Jacobs and Generals International hosted a three hour webcast that featured Wallnau, as well as New Apostolic Reformation godfather C. Peter Wagner, during which Wallnau laid out how Christians are supposed to gain control over these mountains through both "overt" and "covert" means .... and those little upside-down horseshoe things floating above the 7 mountains on the white board represent the gates of Hell though which same-sex marriage, abortion, and Islam are attacking America:

You go all the way down into the family mountain. Now you've got family and you've got same-sex marriage being fought. What's up with that? Well, it's another one of these hellish blocking of truth here, bringing through the gate a belief system that whatever form of sexuality you're into is legitimately, constitutionally protected.

Well, while you're doing that, through the religious gate here you've got Islam invading the United States. So you've got your homosexual activity, your abortion activity here, Islam coming in, you've got a financial collapse - all of this, to those of us who are Christians, is an apocalyptic confirmation that when you remove God from public discourse, when you don't line up your thinking with kingdom principles, you inevitably hit an iceberg like the Titanic and you go down.

We want to be able to bring kingdom principles and values into every one of those spheres, realizing that the kingdom can move both in the over proclamation of truth and in the covert instruction of principles.

So here's what I'm saying: believers need to start to move into the high places where they're going to come up against the gates of hell. We will, I guarantee you, come up against the gates of hell because when a believer comes into these high places, he comes head into - boom - the principles that are working there. And when you hit a wrong principle, listen to me, when you hit a wrong principle you hit a principality.

And when you hit a principality and you succeed in that conflict, watch what happens, you open up a portal, you open up a pathway so that light can come in. And this is exactly what we need now - we need Heaven to come invade Earth and bring, through portals, new leadership.

And if you are impressed by that presentation, The Oak Initiative is hosting a "Power Communications Seminar" with Wallnau, Rick Joyner, & Jerry Boykin later this month that you can attend for the bargain price of $900.

Last night, these same leaders once again join Garlow, this time for a live webcast from Washington DC that also featured Walter Hoyle, Chuck Stetson, James Robison, Samuel Rodriquez, Jordan Lorence of the Alliance Defense Fund, Lance Wallnau, Tony Perkins, and Richard Land.

The event itself had just a few handfuls of people in attendance, but it was broadcast by GodTV and I spent my Sunday evening watching it so I could bring you the highlights.

Most of event was standard Religious Right fare, with leaders discussing the paramount importance of fighting abortion and saving marriage as people like Colson marveled at that we are now celebrating homosexuality which, just a few decades ago, was "shameful and embarrassing":

Thirty years ago now, I was running the 1972 presidential political campaign and we were accused, those of you who remember the history of the Nixon era, we were accused of lots of dirty tricks. And one of them was that I had planted gays in the campaign of the President's opponent, Senator George McGovern. I didn't, but I was accused of it because that would have been a dirty trick.

Today, we're celebrating what just 35 years ago was considered something shameful and embarrassing. We're not only celebrating it, we're taking an institution which has been the foundation building block of society and civilized societies going back as far in history as we can go back - a man and a woman joined together as God says as one flesh - and we're saying we want to re-define that.

I don't know about you guys, but you'll never hear me say "gay marriage" again because there is no such thing. There can't be gay marriage. Marriage is a man and a woman. The fact of the matter is you can't have anything called gay marriage. From now on to me it's "so-called gay marriage" or its "civil union" or whatever you want to call it, but it's not marriage.

And then, of course, there was Lou Engle just being Lou Engle as he got revved up about how fasting and prayer can finally reverse the forty year rebellion set off in 1969 with the release of "the Stonewall homosexual movement":

I feel like this is a defining moment in American history. I feel like we're in a moment when epochs have got to turn. In the Scriptures you see the power of the forty day fast to change spiritual eras.

Moses fasted forty days and the law of God was released into the Earth.

Elijah fasted forty days at a time when they had legalized child sacrifice and homosexual and heterosexual prostitution in the days of Ahab and Jezebel. But it was in that darkest hour that God raised up its greatest prophetic movement as well.

God is not done with America. and when that spell of Jezebel ruled over the land, promoting sexual immorality all over the place, God releases a forty day fast through Elijah. With the spell of Jezebel and the discouragement of those who were reformers, God breaks that thing with a forty day fast and releases a whole new era with a movement to release the next religious leaders, spiritual leaders, and political leaders as God ripped through that land and purged Baal worship at that time.

God's the same yesterday, today, and forever. I believe we're at the end of the forty year rebellion of the Sixties. 1969: the Stonewall homosexual movement was released. 69: Woodstock. Forty years from that point, I dare to believe that if they church will take this time seriously in fasting and prayer, we can actually begin to fulfill what a generation has failed in for forty years.

In the very first post I wrote about Pray and Act, I noted how 7 Mountains Dominionism was at the heart of the organization's agenda and pointed to a clip of the leading 7 Mountains advocate, Lance Wallnau, explaining how Christians must take control of these specific areas in order to lay the groundwork for the return of Christ.

In case that wasn't clear enough, last night Garlow actually included Wallnau in the webcast and Wallnau made the case that Christians are in a war for control of these 7 Mountains and the object of this war is permanent occupation:

While we've been trying to preach, secular forces have been educating America. We didn't lose the homosexual argument over night. Twenty-five years, from Chuck Colson's testimony 'til now, tells me that it wasn't because of something we did, it's because of something we failed to do: we didn't influence media and arts. When you've got media and arts, you've got a pulpit going twenty-four hours a day educating your children on values. We didn't educate ourselves regarding the judiciary and so political appointments were made - and we always focus on politicians, we got ga ga at election time, forgetting politicians are the spoil of a different battle; it's the battle of influence.

We have superior weapons, a superior message, and superior power. When it comes to being able to move forward in this, we've got evidence all over the place of how transformation can happen, but it starts with this: clarity is power.

If Christians don't understand that power isn't just in us in the church, there is an authority that is in government, there is an authority in arts and media, there's an authority in family - I look at those as seven spheres where God has to raise up champions.

Napoleon's maxim is "the object of war is victory." You know what we do, we get so dumb - we're supposed to be wise as a serpent and as harmless as doves but we end up being as dumb as a doorknob in lacking the shrewdness we need. When we have elections, when we have victories, short-term victories, we go back and celebrate it like that's it. Well, here's what Napoleon says about warfare: the object of war is victory, but the objective of victory is occupation. We don't win until we occupy high places.

The way that governments and nations are formed is that minorities of people occupy strategic places of influence and they leverage that influence through leverage within networks that are closely, tightly knit together. The church has to become a Kingdom Force, leveraging its influence within greater spheres than just evangelism and then linking shields together. I believe, with prayer and fasting, we will see a freshly invigorated move of God in the United States.

If we have 535 people in Washington, DC - House and Senate - who are voting through laws that cause grandchildren and great-grandchildren of yours yet unborn to be saddled with a debt they cannot handle, that is called thievery.

There's a law against stealing: Thou shalt not steal. We have no right to steal from future generations. So the whole economic issue is a biblical issue.

Debt like we have in America is immoral. It is wrong. There should be a screaming up. This could cause a suffocation and a complete destruction of all we hold dear. The taxation is becoming oppressive.

The reason that we have these kind of bad laws passing in our Congress is very simple: what percentage of the people making the laws are attending a church where the Bible is being taught? Let me go further though: if it's a small percentage that are there, let's just pick an arbitrary number - 10%, 15%, 20% - are attending a church where the Bible is being taught, let me ask you a question, how many of them are going to a church where biblical economics is being taught so the person who goes to make the laws has the moral foundation, the biblical background, to be able to vote through the right kind of laws? We have been silent and I believe the spirit of God is stirring something at a deep level.

When I find people who don't morally get it on the issue of abortion, I appeal that way you just appealed. When you consider when abortion started, how many years have passed, the people who were originally killed now would have been having children who were up to the age fifteen. So we have lost massive numbers of people [and] when I'm with unemployed people who believe in abortion, I say "one of the reasons you're unemployed is because there are no houses being bought, there are not cars being purchased, there are no schools being built for people who've been killed. You don't have a job today, in part, because of the massive slaughter of humanity."

People don't understand, it's an economic issue. There's a reason God said be fruitful and multiply. He was serious about that.

A few weeks back, I wrote a post about Rick Joyner and The Oak Initiative, one of the "prophetic intercessor" groups that, like Lou Engle and The Call and Cindy Jacobs and General International, are becoming increasingly active within the more "mainstream" Religious Right.

Later this month, The Oak Initiative will be hosting its first ever Oak Convention in South Carolina which is scheduled to include Joyner, Samuel Rodriguez, Lance Wallnau, Jerry Boykin, Cindy Jacob, and others where they will discuss methods for gaining influence over their version of the 7 Mountains:

At this time it is important to establish a leadership forum that focuses on the current major areas of dominant influence and crisis, including:

To do this we want to establish a leader and a council to address each of these spheres. Organizing this will be one of the major goals of the August Oak Convention. We will be establishing each of these with a Chairman, Asst. Chairman, and a staff devoted to both Research and Communications. The purpose of these councils will be to provide an accurate assessment of the great issues of the times, and to propose answers and solutions to them.

And among the ways they hope to do this is by creating their own "Christian Intelligence Service" and building their own media empires [PDF]:

The formation of a Christian Intelligence Service

This is for training an army of “watchmen” who are skilled in discerning important issues or events as they unfold, and can gather basic information about it that is accurate and trustworthy.

One of the number one issues that seems uniform across nations and cultures at this time is a deteriorating trust in the media for accurate reporting and information. Most of the people on earth have never had government information sources that they trusted to be accurate, but in recent times even the most trusted governments have had a significant collapse of integrity and trust. If this void is not filled with truth and accurate information, the level of deception of the people will continue to grow. We believe this is a basic call of Christians who are supposed to be a light in their times, which is more than just preaching the gospel, but it is also exposing what is hidden in darkness with the truth that will set people free. We believe fundamentally that all men were created to be free, and that the basis of all freedom is truth.

The formation of media outlets with the highest standards of integrity and accuracy

We intend to build a world-class media outlet that is built more on trust and integrity than just style and technology, though we intend to be good at these too. The body of Christ has the people resources to quickly become a great light that shines in this darkness with truth. We have the ability to almost immediately reach virtually every major nation, and most of the world’s population with news and information for less than the cost that is now paid to a single executive at present media outlets.

And of course the aim of all of this is decidely political, as demonstrated by this new ad The Oak Initiative has posted on its YouTube page which declares that America regrets electing President Obama and the Democrats because they are a threat to this nation and so "we're coming after you" and "now you will pay" in 2010:

When I wrote the post the other day about Lou Engle's new political organization, Pray and A.C.T, I focused primarily on the Seven Mountains Dominion theology that serves as its foundation and the fact that leading Religious Right leaders were, for the first time, openly embracing an agenda that seeks to take over every aspect of our culture in order to bring about the return of Jesus Christ.

But what I failed to properly highlight was how Pray and A.C.T is explicitly seeking to implement this Dominionist agenda through the electoral system.

As Lance Wallnau, a leading proponent of Seven Mountains theology, explained nations are not taken through "evangelism harvests" but rather by having Christians "take over spheres and administer them for the glory of God." And one of the best ways to do that is to start by targeting the government, which is why Engle, Chuck Colson, Jim Garlow, Mike Huckabee, Samuel Rodriguez, Harry Jackson, Tony Perkins, James Dobson, and others are calling for 40-days of prayer and fasting ... but, more importantly, they seeking to mobilize voters who will pledge never to vote for any candidate who does not share their views on abortion, marriage, and religion:

But it is not enough to pray. We must vote and act according to God’s heart and mandates ... In the light of this we are declaring that we will not vote for any Republican or Democrat that in any way supports any measure that aides or sustains the killing of the unborn.

In similar fashion because of God’s foundational marriage blueprint from creation we declare that we can never vote for any candidate that does not stand for a federal amendment that holds that marriage is only between a man and a woman.

...

We refuse to align ourselves with governmental systems that legalize evil in order to be marked as those who have compassion for the poor and the needy. We can do it all without compromising biblical truth as our so-called “social justice brothers” would try to make us believe.

The parade of history has brought us into a profound generational landmark, and a great vacuum has opened again. If the church does not seize this moment Muslims will! Antichrist rage will! Sexual perversion will! Anarchy will! But now is the time for key men and women, even an entire generation to risk everything to become the hinge of history, the pivotal point which determines which way the door will swing in America and in the nations of the earth. Its 40 Days or 40 Years! Seize the Day!

For Life, Marriage, and Religious Liberty.

So while one half of the Pray and A.C.T mission is prayer, the other is action ... and by action, they mean voting:

Being consistent by voting in all elections only for candidates who affirm the sanctity of life in all stages and conditions, the integrity of marriage as the union of one man and one woman, and religious liberty and respect for conscience.

Several months ago, we noted that Jim Garlow and David Barton were leading a 12 day tour of the East Coast where participants would learn all about the Christian history of our nation and its founder and visit "the sites of the 1st and 2nd Great Awakening, while praying for the 3rd."

Day 2 ... we went on to New York City that night, where we were met by Mike Huckabee. He shared with our group for over an hour.

Day 4 ... [W]e went back to New York City [and] the women of our group went to the Glenn Beck Show for the taping of the Friday broadcast entitled, “Women of the Revolutionary War.”

Day 5 ... David Barton and I and our wives left Ocean Grove and were driven back to New York City to go to the taping of the Glenn Beck Show, along with a number of other pastors. Then we met with Glenn Beck for three hours after that taping.

Day 6 ... David and I flew back to New York City to be on the Glenn Beck Show with a group of about 7-8 pastors / Christian Leaders. Lance Wallnau flew in from Dallas to speak to the group in Philadelphia. Lance Wallnau was, as usual, exceptional in his laying out of how to see the culture transformed.

Day 7 ... we traveled to Washington, DC, where we met with Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council. Immediately following that we went to the Fairmont Hotel where Senator Rick Santorum gave one of the most impassioned speeches I have ever heard.

Day 8 – Saturday, July 3 – began with former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich addressing our group. He was profound. Newt has the capacity to focus on macro-ideas in a way like no other. From there we made our way to Mt. Vernon, beloved home of George Washington. Rick Tyler, spokesman for Newt Gingrich and Founding Director of Renewing American Leadership, spoke to the group via the intercom on the way to/from Mt. Vernon, clarifying the nature of participation in civil governance.

We then went back to the Capital and met in the Longworth Congressional Building (home of the offices of the House of Representatives) for a talk by Congressman Bob McEwen entitled, “Politics: As Easy as PIE.”

On Day 9 – Sunday, July 4 – we attended Hope Christian Fellowship (Beltsville, MD), where we had arranged for Maggie Gallagher, the articulate founder of the National Organization for Marriage, to speak to our group, followed by the morning service, for which Bishop Harry Jackson – one of America’s most courageous pastors – had prepared a sermon appropriately entitled “The Next Great Awakening.”

At one point, Garlow and his wife were allowed to lay a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier ... which, of course, made him realize that Elena Kagan should not be confirmed to the Supreme Court:

Later I found myself inwardly agitated as I began to reflect on the tragedy of Elena Kagan – an outspoken critic of the military [in spite of her attempts to deny it now] – being considered for a position on the Supreme Court. How unfortunate for our nation.

For weeks now I have been writing regular posts on the increasing intersection between the "mainstream" Religious Right and Dominionist prophetic intercessors like Lou Engle, Cindy Jacobs, Rick Joyner and others.

But I have always beencareful to note that just because the more "mainstream" leaders have been joining forces with these self-proclaims prophets and apostles, it didn't mean that they necessarily shared their Dominionist agenda.

But I think it is fair to say that I no longer need to be so careful, as the leaders of the Religious Right have now openly embraced Seven Mountains Dominionist theology, which is described thusly:

First, human beings are blessed by God. Secondly, these blessed human beings are given a mandate to take dominion of the earth for the purpose of blessing it. ... The first advent of Christ was for the purpose of creating a blessed seed upon the earth - the church. The second coming of Jesus will take place after this blessed seed has completed the Dominion Process upon the earth by making disciples of all nations.

In short, Dominionist theology believes that Christians are called to take "dominion" over every aspect of our culture and use them to create God's kingdom on Earth in order to bring about the return of Jesus Christ. And their method for gaining "dominion" is through something called the "Seven Mountains Mandate," which seeks to place Christians at the top of seven distinct spheres that shape our culture: (1) Business; (2) Government; (3) Media; (4) Arts and Entertainment; (5) Education; (6) Family; and (7) Religion.

Most believers on the Earth are more frightened at the prospect of taking on the insurmountable giants represented by the mountains near them in their nations. They're more intimidated by trying to take possession of what is an opposition that has strength and fortification in the natural, from the IRS, to Hollywood, to whatever. Most believers are afraid, so they create a theology that eliminates the responsibility for having to take territory and rather focuses on just getting people saved so that when Jesus comes back he can repopulate the Earth with people that are followers and let him take over the planet.

There is just a little problem with that: the little problem is Heaven is his throne and the Earth is the footstool of his feet and he was told that he was to sit at the Father's right hand until God made his enemies a footstool for his feet, which means He doesn't come back until He's accomplished the dominion of nations.

The point is this: God wants to have the tabernacle at the top of every one of these spheres. You want to know what the spheres are that shape a nation? This is how you take a nation: you have to get into the family - that is why same-sex marriage such a demonic agenda ... because who ever shapes the family mountain shapes the idea of what culture is for a man and wife. You got to get into the education mountain, you know why? Because whoever's ideology is shaping that little kid when he's a child, by the time he's 19, hey for all you know he could become part of the Hitler Youth movement and die for the Fuhrer. Hitler basically knew that if he educated them as kids, he'd have them as sons to go fight for him. Government mountain where your laws get legislated. Media mountain where the truth is debated. And the arts mountain which is where sports and creativity come along, and we've got business and finance. Is it possible that there are seven sovereign spheres of authority?

By the way, that's how you take nations. It's the only way you take nations. There has never been a nation taken as the result of an evangelism harvest. Shocking but true. Believers don't know these things, which is why we get in trouble.

You realize that when you have 8% of a population, that's the key. 8%, that's all it takes. 8%, according to the Center for Religious and Diplomacy, practice Jihad. 8%, according to the research of James Davidson Hunter, are doing the same sex marriage initiative, You've got 80% Jews, Catholics, Protestants, 35% of Evangelicals, even Mormons - you have a very broad constituency of 85-90% of the American population is not for same-sex marriage. How is it that 7% can impose their agenda on the other 90%? It's not because we don't have enough converts to an idea - it's because when Satan is shrewder in his own generation than the Sons of Light, he makes sure that he has his prophets of Baal at the high places. So what you have is a well-positioned 8% whose agenda is working with the will of Principalities and Powers while Christians are in pursuit of the supernatural or glory or prosperity, but they're missing the apostolic assignment. They're to take over spheres and administer them for the glory of God.

It is exceedingly clear that the Seven Mountains is a Dominionist theology that carries with it the ultimate goal of creating God's kingdom on Earth so as to create the conditions needed to bring about Christ's return.

And amazing, it is something that just about every Religious Right leader has now officially embraced.

Last week, Lou Engle was featured on Focus on the Family's "Friday Five" where he announced his latest political endeavor: a groups called Pray and A.C.T. The acronym A.C.T stands for "Affirming the Basics, Conforming our Lives, and Transforming the Culture," and the "basics" which they are affirming are those values set out in The Manhattan Declaration, the document produced by the Religious Right earlier this year vowing to give their lives to withstand President Obama's attempts to set himself up as a Nazi-like dictator.

For these reasons, we call on all faithful Christians to join us in the fight to defend life, protect and revitalize marriage, and preserve religious liberty and the rights of conscience. We must work tirelessly in all the “seven spheres of cultural influence:” (1) the home, (2) the church, (3) civil government / law / military, (4) business / technology, (5) education, (6) media, and finally (7) arts / entertainment / professional sports.

Pray and A.C.T is planning a series of Call-like events leading up to the 2010 election; events that are explicitly rooted in a theology which seeks to place Christians in complete "dominion" over every aspect of this nation ... and this effort is now being supported by the heads of highly influential "mainstream" Religious Right groups like Focus on the Family, Family Research Council, National Organization for Marriage Concerned Women for America, the Southern Baptist Convention, and even a potential Republican presidential candidate in Mike Huckabee.

A few months ago, Janet Porter of Faith 2 Action lost her radio program because of her growing support for this sort of Seven Mountains Dominionism, and today this very same theology is being embraced by the Religious Right as a whole ... and I don't think it is possible to overstate just what a radical transformation the movement appears to be undergoing.

When I received email alerts yesterday from Wallbuilders, Renewing American Leadership, and the Faith and Freedom Coalition announcing that their respective leaders - David Barton, Jim Garlow, and Ralph Reed - were all going to appear on Glenn Beck last night, I knew something remarkable was going on.

Instead, I want to use this to further explore something I mentioned last week in my "The Religious Right and Six Degrees of Dominionism" post: though not every person who shares a stage with a controversial figure can be said to share that figure's views, those who either invite such figures to participate in their events or else themselves agree to appear at events hosted by such figures are offering, on some level, their validation of such views.

In the case of last night's Beck program, it would be unfair to say that Robert George shares the radical views of John Hagee just because they shared the stage; but it is fair to say that Beck does, at least in part, or else he would never have invited Hagee on to participate in this panel. By the same token, by appearing on Beck's program, George is signaling that he is entirely comfortable using that venue as an outlet through which he is eager to share his own views with an audience who shares Beck's views.

Which brings me to my main point: two of the men featured on Beck's program last night also appeared at Convergence 09:

According to the schedule, Barton spoke for three hours, but unfortunately I have not been able to find any video of his speech ... but he clearly was there:

And I did manage to track down this email announcement from Generals International announcing the conference - note especially the militant language and central role that spiritual warfare was to play in the event:

Mike and I would like to invite you to gather together with us and intercessors from across the world to raise up a prayer army to both awaken and reform this nation.

One does not have to be prophetic to realize that we are at one of the most serious junctures of history our nation has ever known. Some are even suggesting that the United States as it stands is in the balance. Critical times require us as intercessors and believers in the Lord Jesus Christ to rally for troop training. We need a new generation of Generals to arise and war for the soul of our nation!

With this in mind, we know that we cannot pray the way we have in the past season. We need new prayers for a new day. Every army has to come aside for training and equipping. They need to learn how to work with spiritual intelligence and use their weapons of warfare.

We have often said that if we want to see what we have never seen, we have to do what we have never done. This also means that if we want to see this nation not lose her destiny, then we are going to have to fight to ensure that we become the city set on a hill our forebearers fought for!

With this passion in our hearts, we are calling you to come and prepare for battle in what we are calling Convergence ‘09: Raise Up An Army! We have brought together one of the finest teams of equippers we could find to help us mobilize to change the nation, including David Barton, Dutch Sheets, Lance Wallnau, Chuck Pierce, Harry Jackson, Jim Garlow, Cheryl Sacks, Jim Hennesy, Klaus Kuehn, Mike Jacobs and Cindy Jacobs.

Again, I have been uable to find any of the video from the conference, but I did find these "action shots" of Jacobs performing some sort of faith healing on stage:

Now, I will admit that I have been following Barton's work closely for quite some time now and have never heard him talk about Dominionism or the Seven Mountains Mandate. But I also had no idea that he associated with Dominionists like Jacobs and company either.

As I have said, there is a danger in playing "six degrees" with some of these connections ... but it is also completely fair to point out these connections, especially since they seem to be playing a bigger and bigger role within the "mainstream" of the Religious Right as a movement.

Lance Wallnau Posts Archive

Twentieth century, let’s see, we left the secularists in charge…We had Hitler, we had Joseph Stalin and we had Mao. 120 million people [killed]. It gets worse. In the second half of the 20th century, we’ve murdered 400 [million] babies through abortion in China and 50 million in the United States. Let’s see, there are 500 million people we have killed in the 20th century. It’s one-tenth of the number of people who are living today, almost one-tenth.
How did we do that? We let the secularists in charge. You can’t let the secularists in charge!... MORE >

Evangelist Lance Wallnau announced on the Trinity Broadcasting Network’s Praise the Lord that God is giving Christians "technology that can heal diabetes" within months, along with technology “that is going to revolutionize our dependence on oil and energy.” However, Wallnau shared that these new discoveries will only be “given to Kingdom-minded believers” and not sold to benefit the general public.
Later in the interview, Wallnau likened the development to the Apostle Paul, who in Acts of the Apostles obtained refuge from the leader of Malta after... MORE >

On Friday’s "Prophetic Prospectives with Rick Joyner," leading Seven Mountains dominionist Lance Wallnau used his trademark Magic Marker illustrations to demonstrate the duty of Christians to occupy the “mountains” of government, media and economics. Referring to the parable of the strong man, Wallnau suggests that these “mountains” of influence are currently being occupied by Satan:
Well, the church is the equipping place, but the world system is where we haven’t gone. We’ve been going into all the nations to plant churches. We haven... MORE >

On Wednesday’s edition of Prophetic Perspectives with Rick Joyner, Lance Wallnau, a major proponent of Seven Mountains Dominionism, explained that the Occupy Wall Street movement emerged as a result of the fact that the Devil, and not right-wing Christians, was in charge of Wall Street banks, which he says led to the economic crisis. Wallnau said that along with the economics mountain, “the Devil will send kings” to different cultural mountains, such as government media, arts and education, to “screw it up.” He warned that government leaders are “under the... MORE >

Ever since the New Apostolic Reformation had its political coming out party at Rick Perry's recent "The Response" prayer rally, there has been a lot of investigation and discussion of the movement and the brand of Dominion Theology that is promotes ... so much so, in fact, that NAR-affiliated leaders have suddenly begun trying to downplay all their talk of taking dominion.
Os Hillman, the man behind the Reclaiming The Seven Mountain website, has recently suggested that activists should stop using the word "dominion" and instead use the word "influence"... MORE >

Earlier today Brian noted how even conservative Christian activists, like talk-show host Janet Mefferd, are marveling at the "strange turn of events" that had brought the self-proclaimed apostles and prophets of the New Apostolic Reformation together with the traditional Religious Right activists and put on display for the world to see at Gov. Rick Perry's "The Response" prayer rally.
But it is not just "mainstream" Religious Right activists who are alarmed at this development, as now even the full-blown Christian Reconstructionists at American Vision are... MORE >

As we have been noting over the last few weeks, all of these people who have spent the last several years calling on Christians to take dominion over the Seven Mountains have suddenly started downplaying their Dominionist agenda.
New Apostolic Reformation guru C. Peter Wagner has been especially active in trying to downplay the Dominionist aspect of his movement and just yesterday spent twenty minutes telling Voice of America that they were merely seeking to "influence" society and have no interest in establishing any sort of theocratic society.
The problem for Wagner is that... MORE >

We have been writing about the growing overlap between the traditional Religious Right and the new brand of self-proclaimed prophets and apostles like Cindy Jacobs, Rick Joyner, Chuck Pierce, and Lou Engle, who have emerged out of the New Apostolic Reformation movement.
In recent years, old-school Religious Right leaders like Tony Perkins and Janet Porter have eagerly embraced leaders like Joyner, Engle and Jacobs and welcomed them into movement, often placing them front and center in their events.
So imagine our surprise when we took at look at the American Family Association's... MORE >